I really liked the original ObsCure! It doesn’t exactly push the envelope as far as survival horror goes, and there are… certainly issues (the final boss, for one), but it’s a fun, kind of goofy game that’s… kind of like a more fast-paced, multiplayer Resident Evil with the same sort of tone as a teen horror movie. What I really like about it is the little things it does that feel kind of unique to it. I love the focus around light weakening the monsters/zombies as a gameplay mechanic — it adds a whole new dimension into how you approach weapons and encounters, and that moment where the sun goes down and you can no longer break the windows to trivialize encounters is a really nice ‘oh shit’ moment. Permadeath is present, but totally optional: you can just load a save and the game gives more than you’re ever going to need. Most of all, I really liked the cast — both how they perfectly emulate their high school archetypes without feeling like cardboard cutouts and how each of them brings something gameplay-wise — differing stats, in addition to unique and (mostly) useful talents that make building your team of two a significant decision. Again, it’s… mostly derivative, aside from the little bits and bobs where it differentiates, but it’s fun and charming and it really hits all the right beats enough that as of writing this it honestly contends for being one of my favourite survival horror games.
ObsCure II, on the other hand…
The story follows three of the main characters of the previous game plus, like, four more new characters, as they try to move on from what happened at their high school and transition to college/adult life. However, everybody at college is obsessed with things like sex and smoking hardcore drugs, and when a new flower starts getting smoked around campus, the rampant sexual activity creates a super-STD that, on the night of a frat party, rapidly turns all the college students into bloodthirsty monsters. It becomes up to both the new and old characters to team up, kill some zombies, and… actually things just end there. You just kind of do things and then things happen. It’s one of those kinds of plots.
And I’ll give it credit, a lot of the skeleton that made the first game a blast is still present here. Most of all being that the game can still be played all the way through with a partner via local multiplayer — even if the game was otherwise a slog there’s still something in being there with a friend — but even then the gameplay is still fast, yet also loosely strategic at its core. Weapons all have different purposes and capabilities aside from the usual ranged/melee moniker, and some enemies benefit from taking a different approach to other enemies — broods, for example, requiring quick hits from a baseball bat to avoid getting overwhelmed, while brood mothers often require the prolonged damage of the stun gun or chainsaw to lock them down — and with how quickly you can draw and switch them, combat really does switch up for every encounter you’re in, which is pretty neat. I read on this one Steam guide that this was a deliberate choice so that there was more flow to combat and prevent players from just brute forcing enemies, and while I don’t… think they really got there (I think there’s room to actually make the game harder if they wanted to accommodate that better), it’s interesting to know how much lies beneath the surface in this area.
But while the skeleton’s still present, and kinda fun, all the little kinks it has that really take it up a level are… gone, and replaced with things that really don’t work as well. Permadeath is gone, and so is unlimited saving — replaced by pre-determined save points that only work once, disinclining you from fucking around and potentially making you replay lonnnnnnnng stretches of the game should you be so unfortunate to find out. The emphasis on the enemies being weak to light is… aside from one token room where you can use a searchlight just totally gone — no flashlights, no sunlight (despite you fighting the final boss in broad daylight), no real… anything, in that regard. Everything regarding strategy regarding picking your team has been replaced, too. For the most part, your team of two switches up every so often, and during the sections where you do get to pick… their abilities are now active talents required to solve puzzles, rather than little passive things that make them better at certain things, so if you happened to go all the way with one team and then find a lock you need to pick or a door you need to absorb the mold off, then… whoops, gotta backtrack alllll the way back to the start, and then alllll the way back to where you originally were just because the game mandates that you fight a boss with two specific characters, which… especially low-key sorta sucks, mostly because I remember the first game being really cool with varying cutscenes depending on who you’re playing.
The story is also… kind of yeesh. On one hand, it reads almost like a PSA in terms of how heavy-handed it is about how drugs and sex are BAD and will do bad shit to your body, but on the other hand… it also kind of treats those same subjects in this super leery way? It almost feels like a Friday the 13th movie in how the female characters are kind of shaped by sex appeal, and then it goes the extra mile and frames it like it's on them for being so sexy (like, genuinely, one of the character bios lists them as being ‘responsible for the suspicious stickiness of many a bed-sheet' as if it's her fault they’re jacking off?) and it just feels kind of yucky all around. Even beyond that… it’s just a very stupid plot that could be fun but is undermined by how seriously it expects the player to take it. Like, all these characters get introduced as fratty and vapid college students straight out of a Friday the 13th movie and then… suddenly expects me to feel pathos when they all get brutally killed (especially after one has more of a reaction to his crashed car more than his brutally murdered girlfriend)? You just place so much exposition about the backstory and the mystery and the plot when it’s primarily about what the game calls the ultimate STD? Like, at least a lot of other survival horror games with less amazing plots knew how to play it up and have fun with it, but this kind of plays it straight in such a dour way, which makes it harder to laugh with it rather than laugh at it.
And in the end… it’s at least a little bit sad how hard of a downgrade this game is from the original. Like, the core is still there, and it’s at least passable as a multiplayer zombie shooter, but when you sand off all the little things that made ObsCure feel unique... there really isn’t much left for us here. 5/10.
ObsCure II, on the other hand…
The story follows three of the main characters of the previous game plus, like, four more new characters, as they try to move on from what happened at their high school and transition to college/adult life. However, everybody at college is obsessed with things like sex and smoking hardcore drugs, and when a new flower starts getting smoked around campus, the rampant sexual activity creates a super-STD that, on the night of a frat party, rapidly turns all the college students into bloodthirsty monsters. It becomes up to both the new and old characters to team up, kill some zombies, and… actually things just end there. You just kind of do things and then things happen. It’s one of those kinds of plots.
And I’ll give it credit, a lot of the skeleton that made the first game a blast is still present here. Most of all being that the game can still be played all the way through with a partner via local multiplayer — even if the game was otherwise a slog there’s still something in being there with a friend — but even then the gameplay is still fast, yet also loosely strategic at its core. Weapons all have different purposes and capabilities aside from the usual ranged/melee moniker, and some enemies benefit from taking a different approach to other enemies — broods, for example, requiring quick hits from a baseball bat to avoid getting overwhelmed, while brood mothers often require the prolonged damage of the stun gun or chainsaw to lock them down — and with how quickly you can draw and switch them, combat really does switch up for every encounter you’re in, which is pretty neat. I read on this one Steam guide that this was a deliberate choice so that there was more flow to combat and prevent players from just brute forcing enemies, and while I don’t… think they really got there (I think there’s room to actually make the game harder if they wanted to accommodate that better), it’s interesting to know how much lies beneath the surface in this area.
But while the skeleton’s still present, and kinda fun, all the little kinks it has that really take it up a level are… gone, and replaced with things that really don’t work as well. Permadeath is gone, and so is unlimited saving — replaced by pre-determined save points that only work once, disinclining you from fucking around and potentially making you replay lonnnnnnnng stretches of the game should you be so unfortunate to find out. The emphasis on the enemies being weak to light is… aside from one token room where you can use a searchlight just totally gone — no flashlights, no sunlight (despite you fighting the final boss in broad daylight), no real… anything, in that regard. Everything regarding strategy regarding picking your team has been replaced, too. For the most part, your team of two switches up every so often, and during the sections where you do get to pick… their abilities are now active talents required to solve puzzles, rather than little passive things that make them better at certain things, so if you happened to go all the way with one team and then find a lock you need to pick or a door you need to absorb the mold off, then… whoops, gotta backtrack alllll the way back to the start, and then alllll the way back to where you originally were just because the game mandates that you fight a boss with two specific characters, which… especially low-key sorta sucks, mostly because I remember the first game being really cool with varying cutscenes depending on who you’re playing.
The story is also… kind of yeesh. On one hand, it reads almost like a PSA in terms of how heavy-handed it is about how drugs and sex are BAD and will do bad shit to your body, but on the other hand… it also kind of treats those same subjects in this super leery way? It almost feels like a Friday the 13th movie in how the female characters are kind of shaped by sex appeal, and then it goes the extra mile and frames it like it's on them for being so sexy (like, genuinely, one of the character bios lists them as being ‘responsible for the suspicious stickiness of many a bed-sheet' as if it's her fault they’re jacking off?) and it just feels kind of yucky all around. Even beyond that… it’s just a very stupid plot that could be fun but is undermined by how seriously it expects the player to take it. Like, all these characters get introduced as fratty and vapid college students straight out of a Friday the 13th movie and then… suddenly expects me to feel pathos when they all get brutally killed (especially after one has more of a reaction to his crashed car more than his brutally murdered girlfriend)? You just place so much exposition about the backstory and the mystery and the plot when it’s primarily about what the game calls the ultimate STD? Like, at least a lot of other survival horror games with less amazing plots knew how to play it up and have fun with it, but this kind of plays it straight in such a dour way, which makes it harder to laugh with it rather than laugh at it.
And in the end… it’s at least a little bit sad how hard of a downgrade this game is from the original. Like, the core is still there, and it’s at least passable as a multiplayer zombie shooter, but when you sand off all the little things that made ObsCure feel unique... there really isn’t much left for us here. 5/10.